It's been five years since
the opening of the Getty Centerthe Big Kahuna of Richard
Meier's career [ARCHITECTURAL RECORD, November 1997, page
78]. Since the Getty was completed, the eminent architect
has found himself working on a number of smaller projects,
while still keeping offices in New York and Los Angeles. On
the eve of his 40th year with his own practice, architectural
record visited Meier to discuss his current work and his thoughts
on a number of topics, such as the difference between European
and American architecture, the importance of technical innovations,
the influence of the computer on design, and the planning
for the World Trade Center site. As is well known, after he
got his B.Arch. from Cornell in 1957 Meier's career began
with houses. He worked for Davis Brody Wisniewski, then Skidmore,
Owings & Merrill, and finally, Marcel Breuer before opening
his own office. His designs for houses immediately brought
him renown, and he became known for his mastery of scale,
detail, and simplicity. During his career, Meier has never
wavered from his commitment to the Modernist vocabulary, nor
succumbed to the vicissitudes of fashion. Instead, he has
been able to accomplish a difficult thing for an "established"
architect with an expanding practice: maintain rigorously
high standards of design. [For accompanying photos please
see Architectureal Record, September 2002.]

Architectural
Record : Your career took
off with the Smith House in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1965,
which was followed by other residential projects, museums,
schools, office buildings, and town halls, until finally the
Getty Center, finished in late 1997. Where do you go after
the "commission of the century"?

Richard Meier:
Ironically, right now we're doing a number of small-scale
projects. At the time we were working on the Getty, I was
doing many other things. I would spend two weeks a month at
the Getty and then two weeks working on other projects. When
the Getty was completed after 18 years, other work was finished,
as well, such as Siemens in Munich (1986). And shortly after
the Getty, the federal courthouses in Islip, New York, and
Phoenix opened. More recently, we finished the Rickmers Headquarters
in Hamburg, Germany, and the Canon Headquarters in Tokyo.

Yet I hadn't
thought the Getty would leave as much of a void as in fact
it has. The current economic and political situation has slowed
things down. Universities seem to be our most active source
of work right now; for example, we are designing the new building
for the History of Art department and Arts Library at Yale,
and a Life Science Technology Building at Cornell University.
But the private sector has pulled back the greatest amount
in terms of their planning for the future.

AR:
Which small-scale projects are of particular interest to you?

RM:
We're doing a small, private art museum in Baden-Baden for
Frieder Burdaan entrepreneur who has an extraordinary
collection of contemporary art. The project, which is in a
city park next to the Kunsthalle, is like a big house. Burda
is giving the building and the
collection to the city. We're also doing the Peek & Cloppenburg
Department Store in Mannheim, Germany, and a bridge in Alessandria,
in northern Italy, which did have some problems but is going
ahead. In the United States, our L.A. office is adding onto
Philip Johnson's Crystal Cathedral in Orange Grove, California,
with a Hospitality and Visitors Center. And we are designing
some housesone in Katonah, New York, the other
in Santa Barbara, California.

AR:
Yet you still design houses. Why? Often architectural offices
of a certain size don't want to be bothered.

RM: I
enjoy housesthat's why I got involved advising
Coco Brown on selecting architects for his Sagaponack development
on Long Island. A house goes quickly compared to a public
building. And you can do different things with houses, such
as explore energy conservation by making use of location,
climate, orientation to the site. We've explored the use of
glass louvers on the Katonah house to cut down glare.

AR:
And, of course, there is the Jubilee Church in Rome, which
is not so simple. This series of curved shells has a more
plastic expression than much of your previous work. Is this
fluidity a design direction on your part?

RM:
This church really demanded a different attitude and a different
approach. The sanctuary space is composed of three sections
of a sphere, which enclose the day chapel, the baptistry,
and the atrium, with natural light coming in from above. These
curved walls are cantilevered vertically from the ground,
with glass all around and between them. Rather than being
poured-in-place concrete, they are precast, since it was easier
to control the form of the sphere and give the sections the
same smooth, white surface inside and out. By the way, we're
using the concrete originally developed by Nervi, when he
designed the Palazzo and Palazzetto dello Sport stadiums in
Rome in the late 1950s.

In the church,
each segment of the sphere weighs about 8 tons. The segments
were shipped to the site, where a crane moved along a track
and installed the pieces, which were then posttensioned. No
one's ever erected anything of this scale in terms of a precast
assembly system. And I must say, we have extraordinary structural
engineers, Italcementi, who worked with us in Italy and figured
out how this thing could be manufactured, taken to the site,
and erected.

AR:
Initially you described a challenging business environment,
but intellectually, you're involved with new ideas here. Although
the church has been going slowly, doesn't it explore form
and material differently from anything you have done?

RM: No
one's done it before! With another project, the Performing
Arts Center in Bethel, New York, we designed a curved glass
roof over a louvered timber ceiling, all supported by a space
frame that spans 200 feet. Unfortunately, the project is not
going ahead, but the concept, which we worked out with Arup,
would have provided an outdoor roofed space sheltering 3,500
people, with additional seating on the lawn for 10,000.